The business of applicants' assignee started many years ago with manufacture of a gear puller, generally as shown in the Kaplan U.S. Pat. No. 1,709,913, wherein a pair of pivotally-mounted pulling jaws are associated with a forcing screw. The pulling jaws are pivotally mounted intermediate their ends on links which are pivoted to a cross block with the structure providing for self-locking in operation and having a range of adjustment. The pulling jaws have different shaped hooks at opposite ends thereof and the structure could be disassembled for rearrangement of the pulling jaws to enable use of the alternately usable hooks.
Other types of pullers, or similar structures, are known in the prior art. The Hommel U.S. Pat. No. 1,777,616 discloses a work support wherein a plurality of bars having hooks at an end may be loosely supported in radial slots in a member associated with a press and with the bars being both radially and axially adjustable. The structure provides for incremental, rather than infinite radial, adjustment and does not achieve a locking action of the bars when the bars are under load.
A puller having pulling jaws and a cross block held in assembled relation by a structure including pins on a pulling jaw and the cross block is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 1,584,855.
A commercially available puller has a cross member with two or more arms extending from a central section having a threaded forcing screw. Pulling jaws with slots spaced along their length can be fitted onto the cross member by an interfitting association of an arm with a slot in the jaw. Also known, are pullers having a cross member and with a pulling jaw having a jaw block at its upper end with a slot for fitting of a jaw block onto an arm of the cross member.
The prior art known to applicants has not had a bar-type puller comprising a cross block having a central section for threadably receiving an adjustable forcing screw and a pair of end sections which are slotted to provide spaced-apart arms and with spaces therebetween open at one end, a pair of pulling jaws positioned radially relative to the forcing screw at any desired location in said spaces along the length of the arms, at least two spaced-apart pins on each pulling jaw extending from opposite sides thereof to span the tops and bottoms of the arms and with the pins being spaced apart only a slight distance greater than the height of the arms to permit radial movement but locking the pulling jaw when under load because of a slight canting of the pulling jaw which brings the pins into locking relation with the arms. The bar-type puller construction also enables easy reversal of the pulling jaws for internal pulling.